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Monthly Archives: November 2013

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott

It is funny to me how many people start off a conversation about Christianity by saying … “well … the bible says” thus and so. They might not know the proceeding verses or the context in which it was said, but they know certain verses by heart. So many Christians use the Bible as a weapon rather than a tool. Which makes me wonder what they would have done before the Bible was published.

Let me at the onset say I personally believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I believe it is an irreplaceable manual for life. I believe we get to know God more deeply and intimately by studying the Bible. I further believe we become more Christ like by burying the Word of God in our hearts and allowing it to be the guiding force and directive in our lives. I believe the scriptures inside the bible are sacred and it is absolutely the most important book ever published or read.

But the thing many people rarely consider is there actually were Christians BEFORE there was a bible. So let’s think about this a moment. Before there was a bible, how did people spread the message of Jesus Christ? Before there was a listing of right and wrong behaviors, when the Apostle Paul was still Saul the killer of Christians, how did one become a Christian? There was no John 3:16 to reference. The salvation scriptures found in Acts, Romans, Philippians, Hebrews, 1 Peter, etc. had not been written, much less published.

All they had back then was Jesus Christ himself and the personal knowledge of him or personal accounts of him and what he had done. This is where Christianity starts. This is the root, the foundation and the very cornerstone of Christianity. Who do you believe Jesus Christ to be? So in light of Jesus Christ being all they had, what are the things Jesus taught? What are some of the things Jesus DID NOT teach that are being taught in our churches today? Did Jesus ever teach anyone was beyond redemption? Did Jesus ever teach his death would not be sufficient for certain individuals? Did Jesus ever teach to exclude anyone? Did Jesus ever teach that you must change in order to be worthy of his sacrifice on the cross? The answer would be No. No. No. and again No.

By stating “the Bible says” many, many people are missing the boat. They are getting the cart before the horse. They are promoting religion rather than relationship. When actually what is biblical is to introduce an individual to the person of Jesus Christ. Let that relationship begin to grow and watch the individual be transformed. You do not help someone “get saved” … you introduce an individual to your friend, Jesus Christ, and let them build a relationship. Through that relationship they are redeemed, changed and saved.

I think some Christians are uncomfortable with this philosophy because they want salvation to be cut, dry and within their control. Some do not like it when a person of whom they do not approve or agree has a relationship with Jesus Christ. Somehow salvation and redemption being available to whosoever is threatening to them. They choose to believe, and wrongly so, that heaven will be filled with people just like them and no one else. They would rather limit God and choose to believe certain people cannot be saved. Certain people are beyond redemption. Some choose to believe this because their definition, understanding and experience of love is so shallow they cannot understand the depth of Christ and His love.

The bottom line is if we quote the Bible at nauseam. If we know every scripture reference ever identified … if we know the name of all 66-books of the bible … if we know all the feasts, all the 10-commandments in order, all the tribes of Israel or how long Methuselah lived, and we fail to accurately recognize, accept and believe in the genuine person of Jesus Christ, the bible scriptures are nothing more than chalk in the rain. Inspired by God, yes, but sadly they are eternally worthless outside the person of Jesus Christ.

Christianity is not a religion … it is a relationship. If we, as Christians, would stop judging those who are different from us long enough to give them an opportunity to establish a relationship with Jesus Christ, God would do amazing things in the lives of ordinary people. Amazing. Things.

What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Savior. Walter Martin

Sometimes I wonder what happened to honest, true biblical theology. In society today there are all types of theology. Even in the Christian community there are several types of theology. Basically what happens is someone takes a point of view, searches for scriptures to support that point of view and then they have a “theology”. A few types of theology are … fundamentalist, mainstream, King James only, gay, feminist, Red Letter, etc. The troubling part about this is while in the Christian church we need to celebrate diversity with the love of Christ; many times these differing theologies create a wider division rather than creating a harmonious, loving community. In doing so each subset often implies they have a better understanding or a clearer revelation of the truth of scripture.

This creates a huge problem. First, we as mere humans are trying to interpret and know the meaning and mind of an omnipotent, all-consuming, all loving God. Second, each and every interpretation of the bible has to be read with the knowledge that the individual interpreting the Bible, at best, was biased by their own person experience. There are meanings to certain words in the Bible that not even the most learned theologians agree.

Salvation, the very root of Christianity, is one such theological sticking point. What exactly must one do to be saved? It is amazing to me that such a simple question can get so muddied in translation. The Bible clearly states in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 is very similar “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Christianity is the only religion I know of where you are saved or redeemed prior to and regardless of performance.

The bottom line is God demands 100% faultless, perfect obedience. If you can’t do that, you’d better find Someone who can do it for you. Consequently, God sent Christ as the perfect and powerful Savior we so desperately needed. An individual, ANY individual, who accepts Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross as sufficient and total is adopted into God’s family. End of story.

Many Christian communities insist on adding to the requirements for salvation. One of the hottest topics and most sensitive issues we face today is that of gay Christians. How many times have you heard God hates gay people? Gays are not going to heaven. Gays are an abomination and beyond redemption. There is no such thing as a “gay” Christian? Being “gay” is proof positive God has turned his back on and given up on an individual.

Some are a little more compassionate and say you can be “gay” before your relationship with Christ began, but once you are saved you can no longer be gay. Their theology will say if you remain gay after salvation you are not really saved and are bound for hell. There is even disagreement and division within the gay Christian community about whether or not it is required for a gay person to be celibate in order to go to heaven.

The terrifying danger of what is being taught is the adulteration of the message of Christ substitutionary work on the cross. If ANYTHING is required in addition to Christ’s death on the cross for salvation, then what we are saying and believing is that Christ’s death on the cross is NOT sufficient. Think about it, if Christ’s work on the cross is not enough, if it is not the sole means by which to obtain salvation, then Christianity is a fraud.

Some will disagree vehemently with what I am about to say, but anything short of you denouncing Christ as your Savior; cannot “void” the salvation contract. In short, heaven will be chocked full of people no one expected to see there. A more disconcerting truth is heaven will be filled with people some Christian “theology” aggressively rejects.

Of course there is more to the Christian life than salvation. There is discipleship, justification, sanctification, faith, grace, mercy, forgiveness, love, being molded and changed into the likeness of Christ … But all of this BEGINS with salvation. The problem is many people do not move into the Christian life because they are discouraged from becoming “saved” in the first place. Once a person allows Christ into their lives and heart; God can then go to work and do as He pleases. He can make any changes He wants to make, transform and revitalize lives and hearts as He sees fit. Not make the changes we as Christians believe He should.

Ask yourself, has anything of eternal value ever been accomplished by a theology of exclusion? Has any amount of demeaning, picketing, protesting, yelling or being hurtful ever saved a single soul? Are we being more like Jesus when we as a Christian community do those things? And if not, why are we doing them?

As a church community we MUST stop excluding people from heaven by teaching salvation is not equally available to all. As a church community we owe an apology to the individuals we push out and force to live in the margins of the faith community by trying to steal away or discount the authenticity of their relationship with Christ. We owe an apology to those individuals who have to fight and are made to feel uncomfortable for simply trying to find a place to worship; trying to find a faith community to which to belong. We owe an apology to those individuals who in an act of total despair and hopelessness, directly related to what we told them, have turned to addiction, or worse suicide. We owe an apology to the family members and friends of those who we marginalized for our lack of compassion and understanding toward them. Most importantly, we need to repent to God for diluting the sacrifice of His only Son on the cross.

It is amazing the Christian community is unwittingly playing directly in to the hands of Satan by destroying itself from the inside out. By beating, bludgeoning and battering each other with the Word of God, we are doing his job for him. I think it is time the church started to further the kingdom of Heaven rather than the kingdom of darkness. How about you?